At Will Employee

There’s a reason LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit has 3x more members than the LinkedIn sub.
- LinkedIn itself is for lunatics now.
Nobody can say what they actually think - it’s career suicide.
So instead, we get rage-bait, fake positivity, performative nonsense and corporate fan fiction. #LinkedIn

It has got steadily worse, partly because of enshitification, and partly for reasons they don't even know themselves. And then how much as been wasted on Sora, which is a costly and environmentally disastrous waste of everybody's brain cells.

LinkedIn have shadow banned my account, because while it's fine for people to rage bait ("What the death of my family taught me about B2B marketing) or just make up stuff throughout their LinkedIn personas, they don't like that I'm calling out corporations for their BS. #censorship

YouTube also is awash with scam ads (although not necessarily AI ones). And the reasons these platforms take money from the scammers is that it's conveniently difficult to stop them, and since they're selling nothing real, they can pay more per ad than a genuine business. #Capitalism

The statue behind the kerfuffle looks like Darth Vader.

All these jobs “replaced by AI.”
AI is a lazy liar that hallucinates.
Most of my coworkers only had one of those traits.
What could possibly go wrong? #AI #Layoffs

Translation: 1. Founder is delusional workaholic
2. Founder pivots constantly because original idea sucked
3. Market is competitive hellscape
4. Switching costs are high enough they're trapped

That moment when:
• Your company posts about "culture" and "values"
• But you just found out a 20-year employee was let go
• It happened without any warning and no announcement.
• And it was right before the holidays.
Corporate social media vs. corporate reality is quite a gap.

The phrase "let's circle back" is just corporate speak for "I wasn't listening and also don't care."

Companies say employees were "impacted" by layoffs like they were hit by a natural disaster.
They weren't impacted. They were fired. By executives. Who made a choice.
Hurricanes impact people. Executives fire them.
Stop hiding behind passive language. #Layoffs #CorporateSpeak

4/4 It's the worst of both worlds.
You get treated like you work at a scrappy underdog, but you're actually working for a monopoly that can crush you without consequence.
"Move fast and break things" just means breaking people.

3/4 So what do they actually mean by "operate like a startup"?
They want:

Startup labor practices (long hours, "do more with less")
Startup disposability (easy to fire people)

WITHOUT:

Startup limitations (lack of capital, resources, power)

2/4 Startups are:

Small and scrappy
Resource-constrained
Fighting for survival
Taking risks because they have to

Amazon is:

1.5 million employees
$2 trillion valuation
Market dominance in multiple sectors
Can afford any risk

"We're Like a Startup" (From Billion-Dollar Companies)
1/4 Amazon's CEO just said they're "committed to operating like the world's largest startup."
That's like Walmart saying "we operate like your neighborhood corner store."
This is obviously absurd. 🧵

I get a dozen texts and emails from them a week. It feels like they're just grifting. And the only thing they offer in terms of policy, is "Not being Trump." Amazing that they think this is sufficient.

It wasn't immediately clear - is this an endorsement and recommendation for the restaurant?

My favorite corporate oxymoron is "mandatory fun." Second favorite is "transparent leadership."

4/4 AI isn't replacing workers. It's being used as cover for the same old cost-cutting dressed up as "innovation."
Don't let them hide behind technology when this is just about profits. #Layoffs

3/4: Funny how AI only threatens certain kinds of jobs.

Notice how it's often:

Customer service getting cut
Junior roles eliminated
Support staff reduced

But never:

Executive positions
C-suite headcount
Board members

2/4: These companies were already planning layoffs to:

Boost quarterly earnings
Please shareholders
Cut costs

AI just gave them a better excuse than "we want higher margins."

The AI Layoff Excuse
1/4: Companies are blaming AI for layoffs.
"We're restructuring for the AI future!"
"Automation is transforming our workforce!"
Here's what's actually happening. 🧵

Amazing reframing. Just as it's no longer about why there are mass layoffs, but how to pretend to be more humane when upending people's lives, now we are to believe that people are being financially wreckless by treating themselves once a week.

Amazon CEO: The Amazon layoffs were about culture.
Culture of greed? #Amazon #Layoffs

Amazon's CEO "We're committed to operating like the world's largest startup" = "We want the ruthless cost-cutting and disposable workforce of a startup, combined with the market dominance and infinite resources of a global monopoly. Best of both worlds. For us, not you." #Amazon #Layoffs

Amazon CEO "...the announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven, not right now, at least. It's culture. " These guys lie so effortlessly. Would be impressive if it wasn't so so sad. #Layoffs #Amazon

One of the scariest developments is how we are now being manipulated and programmed to think that mass layoffs are just unavoidable norms. Instead, courses showing leaders how to feign empathy is the best way forward... #Layoffs

www.linkedin.com/posts/mita-m... This is where we are now. We don't revolt because of the layoffs, we don't even question the layoffs. No, what is important is teaching leaders to lay people off 'humanely'. I prefer the honesty - We're laying you off because we're greedy. #Layoffs #CorporateAmerica

So... A couple of weeks in this place now. Trying to work out the split between real people, bots, trolls and the pig butcherers... It's these last ones being here in such numbers that's really wild... Guess it works, else they wouldn't be here. Sigh. #Scammers

"We're pivoting our strategy" = We have no idea what we're doing but need to look decisive. #CorporateAmerica

I know LinkedIn is a hub of fake positivism, but even for that place, people twisting things to suggest that positive mindset can overcome 10k plus people being laid off by Amazon, is a new low. #Layoffs